It all goes back in the box.

This morning I came across this in my last Moleskine. It's from church this August. For context, it was the moment they were about to collect the tithe:

"What if, while you were playing Monopoly, whenever you gave away money, someone would put real money in a real account for you, and you were the only one who knew this? Would this change how you played the game? Remember that at the end of the game, all the money goes back in the box. It's worthless in reality. You can't take it with you when you're done playing, no matter how much you earned or saved."

I think the Scriptural basis for this, or one of them, can be found in Philippians chapter 4. Paul thanks the Philippians for sending him aid and gifts, then says, "...not that I desire your gifts; what I desire is that more be credited to your account." (4:17)

God's Day Planner

I always feel like you have to pick between God who wants to bless YOU and God who wants YOU to bless EVERYONE ELSE. For blessings, some Jesus-followers tend to make much of things like, "Thank you God that I got to eat pumpkin pie today and it was a nice surprise," and in a way this feels almost shallow, or even too good to be true. I realize that God blessing you and you blessing others are not mutually exclusive, and neither takes priority, I suppose, though that sometimes seems impossible. But the truth is, God really does want to bless you, and he gives gifts of all sizes. Just because he likes you. And loves you.

This picture I've posted made me cry big surprise tears one night as I was rushing through this French comic book* so I could return it to the family that loaned it to me. It's a robot reading the day planner of his creator. I will (loosely) translate it for you. Whenever it says Robi, trade it for your own name, and when it says Sakapus, insert the name of your pet.

Monday the 19th

-Try to talk to Robi in a dream.

-Shine a ray of sun in his room and send a bird to his window to make his heart rejoice.

-Give Sarkapus an urgent need so Robi meets someone awesome instead of staying inside all day.

-Organize a meeting between Robi and someone who knows my address. (Lack of available staff!)

-Allow a circumstance that helps Robi learn to always look on the bright side.

-Save Robi's life. (Discretely.) [Accompanied by a picture of a bus almost hitting him.]

-Give him a nice moment with a friend from work that will turn into a great memory.

-Visit him inconspicuously.

Tuesday the 20th

Robi needs sleep!

-Instead of the sun and bird this time, inspire the neighbor to sing funny to cheer Robi up.

-Move the box Adeline forgot on the stairs so Robi doesn't fall.

-Inspire a phone call from a friend to restore his morale.

-Write to Robi.

-Find Robi a wife who really loves him. (Roba?)

-Keep him from meeting Pat, a bad influence; block the way.

-Make sure his book is where he'll easily find it.

Man, and this is just a made-up comic book. And those are not even that many things. What if in real life God has hundreds of things in mind for us each day? Bet you he does. :o)

-

*The French are the biggest comic-book readers after the Japanese. In a huge bookstore on the busy, centrally-located Boulevard St. Michel in Paris, the entire entry-level floor is dedicated to comic books. Yes, there's a fair amount of manga. The Japanese are the biggest, after all.

Guilt and Giving

Sometimes I think about how I could be doing more for poor people (what? I don't know. All I can think of is walking up to random hobos with a hot meal, or giving money whenever you're asked for it, or taking on several Compassion children). And sometimes, this makes me panic.

I had a fantastic Christmas this year. In every way. I was richly blessed relationally and materially. German relatives who I had previously met about once opened up their homes and schedules to me. I have had really fun and interesting experiences with nice, smart, funny people who really seem to care about me, and on top of that I've gotten some great gifts. And some money. Like, more than I've ever gotten at one holiday in my entire life. And this money really starts to make me panic. Do I have to tithe it? How much do I have to give away? It would be copping out not to give away all of it, what about that verse about selling everything you own to give to the poor? Isn't it ridiculous to give it all away? And to whom? And wouldn't I feel so weird about it that I wouldn't even be glad I had done so?

These are dumb questions, I decided. They smack of fear and legalism, and panic is of the devil. This is what I think:

We don't have to walk around feeling guilty about our lack of deeds/giving. As long as we feel guilty, we are incapable of doing said deeds out of anything but obligation, and they are meaningless unless we do them in love. It's hard for me to accept grace, God's timing, waiting, but if we insist on forcing the deeds, it's declaring God's outrageous, extravagant love isn't enough. His grace that would love us no less even if we never helped another person again, is offensive, but I need to accept that as truth and not fret about my apparent lack of giving back. Everything in its time.

Obviously I think giving back is incredibly important, because it reflects the state of the heart. But I think if we are spending time with God and allowing him to give us a heart just like his, the desire to give will bubble up inside of us, and we can give joyfully out of that.

And fyi, I don't think each good deed and act of giving has to be specifically called out by God in advance. I am just processing through this idea of living guilt-free. I am deciding more and more that everything in the world is so interconnected that we have chances every day to either fight oppression or look the other way: oppression of animals (eating meat at a fast food restaurant), of people (some friends have been telling me chocolate is made by slavery, and I've heard a lot of cheaper clothing is manufactured in sweatshops), or of the earth (being wasteful). We can shop at fair trade stores and buy products that didn't take advantage of anyone before making it to us.

I realize those decisions are all deeds or works, but they have far less guilt and panic attached to them than straight up cash. I am sure we were not meant to live in guilt and panic.

I found some Scriptures that helped me:

"...Rebekah's children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins had done anything good or bad -- in order that God's purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls-- she was told, "The older one will serve the younger." Just as it is written: "Jacob have I loved, but Esau I hated." What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God's mercy." -Romans 9:10-16

We can't work or give our way out of guilt. We can't work or give our way out of anything. God is doing the heavy lifting, doing all the work there is to do, we're on his team, contributing the strengths that he gifted us with to help, and enjoying him in the process.

This one is better:

"I will raise up Cyrus in my righteousness: I will make all his ways straight. He will rebuild my city and set my exiles free, but not for a price or reward, says the LORD Almighty." -Isaiah 45:13

It startled me, and even seemed random. But this is what I got: The Lord is raising up Cyrus. Cyrus is doing his own thing in the sense that he has free will, but is doing God's thing in the sense that he's being animated and guided by God into his good works. Just like all of us. The mistake is in thinking there's separation there, like God does something, and then separately we work out our own other thing. We ought to accept that God promises as long as we seek him, he is doing stuff through us whether or not we are aware of it all the time. Cyrus is not doing those wonderful deeds to impress God or assuage his own guilt in any way, but by divine initiative.

There's always more we can be doing and more we can be giving. But God's Christmas gift to us 365 days a year is not to be panicky or guilty about this fact, because he knows us, and he will use us.

If you are reading this, I'd love to hear what you think. I of course don't want to unintentionally become callous to other peoples' problems while I wait for God to move in a way that may not be what I am expecting.

A Guest Advent Reflection

This is another guest post. It's from The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey:

C.S. Lewis has written about God's plan, "The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear--a Jewish girl at her prayers." Today as I read the accounts of Jesus' birth I tremble to think of the fate of the world resting on the responses of two rural teenagers. How many times did Mary review the angel's words as she felt the Son of God kicking against the walls of her uterus? How many times did Joseph second-guess his own encounter with an angel--just a dream?--as he endured the hot shame of living among villagers who could plainly see the changing shape of his fiancee?

[...]

Nine months of awkward explanations, the lingering scent of scandal--it seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for his entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism. I am impressed that when the Son of God became a human being he played by the rules, harsh rules: small towns do not treat kindly young boys who grow up with questionable paternity.

Malcolm Muggeridge observed that in our day, with family-planning clinics offering convenient ways to correct "mistakes" that might disgrace a family name, "It is, in point of fact, extremely improbable that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at all. Mary's pregnancy, in poor circumstances, and with the father unknown, would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Ghost would have pointed to her need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger. Thus our generation, needing a Savior more, perhaps, than any that has ever existed, would be too humane to allow one to be born."*

The virgin Mary, though, whose parenthood was unplanned, had a different response. She heard the angel out, pondered the repercussions, and replied, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said." Often a word of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain, and in that matter-of-fact response Mary embraced both. She was the first person to accept Jesus on his own terms, regardless of the personal cost.**

from me, not Philip Yancey:

* I sure hope this guy is overstating the case a little bit, but I think he makes a good point even so. I would hope a mother has more control than to just let the baby be aborted without her consent, but either way Jesus would definitely be a prime candidate if you look at reasons people give, like "oh, that family is so poor the kid wouldn't have a good life anyway," and stuff. I agree that Mary's explanation would definitely get her into a psychiatric hospital, too, if most doctors heard it.

**Wow. I love the wording he chose. Accepting Jesus and God's plan (which are one and the same) always comes at a high personal cost, and it must always be on His terms, without compromise, but it's always worth it.

What we are praying for when we pray for the gospel to spread

Last night the pastor at my church here was telling the story of his conversion. He said God meant nothing to his family during his childhood. None of the family believed or cared to follow God's ways. But when he was a teenager, first his sister and then his mother began going to church. He decided to investigate what this was all about, and he began to read the Bible. Not out of love for God, but out of curiosity. Then he said because of his reading the gospel message he began to be thirsty. That was not surprising to me.

Then he said he began to feel dirty. I wasn't sure I had translated correctly. He said he began to feel alone, and to feel very ugly. He said that before his encounter with the gospel as portrayed in the Bible he had been a very prideful person, content in his achievements and his intelligence and the pride of his family for these things about him. I knew that what he was saying made sense, but at first it struck me as very strange. And I realized that many people who don't know God simply don't feel a need for Him. And I realized, again, that the way to God dips into a valley before it climbs to heaven. We aren't taken from glory to glory until we've come face to face with the end of ourselves.

This has been a question I've had lately: how to pray for non-believers, when all they really need is God. At my church in America, sometimes they go and pray for people who don't know God, right in front of them. They ask what they need and pray for that. That's probably fine or they wouldn't be doing it, but I said "they" because I've not yet understood how that is supposed to work. It seems to be ignoring the most glaring and basic need in the person's life to pray for them and leave out the part about their heart encountering God, and yet it seems dishonest to leave that part out if you're planning to do it later so that they don't feel weird.

The truth is, when you find a person who is in need of God (aka everyone who doesn't walk with Him yet), what they need first to even be able to approach Him is a deep sense of unease with the way things are going. This might be why some of us describe encountering God as "having your life turned upside down" or "getting rocked" or even (okay, this is just me, in some dramatic moments) "having your life ruined." Because once you see the truth, going back isn't an option. There are no easy roads left to you once your ignorance has been stripped away. You have to do things that break your fleshly little heart, and yet not to do them is to turn your back on the one you love.

All this has been a surprise to me. It's dawned on me very, very slowly. And it's for this that I believe it's not up to us to make the gospel sound appealing to people. I once told a friend it's not like we listen for problems in someone's life and prescribe God to them like a medicine. He's not a product we're selling. We can't even exaggerate how great He is, but we can misrepresent Him sometimes if we try to make (or God forbid, succeed at making) the Christian life look cool. It's just not cool, okay? It's way better than the alternative, but it's not easier, and to tell someone it is can mess them up for a long time as they try to reconcile this paradox. It's not that we convince people into the kingdom; God chooses people, and calls them, and that's His divine initiative. And we can partner with His work by praying that the people we love will come to know Him.

But let's make no mistake about what we're asking. When I ask for someone's salvation, a person far from God who is pretty happy with their life, I am asking that they will be completely broken. That they will begin to feel dirty, and thirsty, and alone. Even ugly. Not that they will stay feeling that way forever with no comfort, but that they will get to that place and not be able to pretend it away anymore.

All through church I kept having more thoughts about this, and I thought, "maybe it's not so bad to pray for a little unhappiness in this life, seeing that it's so fleeting, and painful anyway, and that it could lead to eternal life. It's just like those metaphors about a doctor who gives a painful but life-saving shot, or who relocates a limb, or those people who have to push harder on the trap to free an animal or whatever."

And I also realized that prayers to get closer to God, which we might toss up so casually, knowing they are always a good bet, never the wrong thing to pray, might as well just be prayers for more sadness and more emptiness, so that God can comfort and fill us. It's impossible for Him to fill what is not empty.

I guess if there's anything good about this, at least for me, it is that whenever I am very, very sad (it happens) I am a vessel that can contain more of God's comfort, or when I am empty or alone, I can invite God to fellowship with me in a way that someone who is totally content just wouldn't be able to.

⁸ Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— ⁹ yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. ¹⁰ Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. ¹¹ See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. --2 Corinthians 7:8-11

P.S. This idea, paraphrased, "Don't Just Pray For Someone's Happiness, You Fool (Because It Might Interfere With God's Work In Their Life)" was originally given to me about a year ago by good ol Oswald Chambers, and I've been working it through ever since, and continue to realize more about it all the time.

A "Guest Post": The Trial of Faith

Let me be very clear. This is a devotional I copied and pasted from My Utmost for His Highest. Calling it a guest post is stretching the truth to the breaking point. It's almost certainly illegal for me to repost it like this, but since I have about eight readers, I don't think it will be a problem. This is the original link: http://utmost.org/the-trial-of-faith/I found this incredibly helpful, even worth breaking the law for. Enjoy:

We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, and it may be so in the initial stages. But we do not earn anything through faith— faith brings us into the right relationship with God and gives Him His opportunity to work. Yet God frequently has to knock the bottom out of your experience as His saint to get you in direct contact with Himself. God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of emotional enjoyment of His blessings. The beginning of your life of faith was very narrow and intense, centered around a small amount of experience that had as much emotion as faith in it, and it was full of light and sweetness. Then God withdrew His conscious blessings to teach you to “walk by faith” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And you are worth much more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight with your thrilling testimony.

Faith by its very nature must be tested and tried. And the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God’s character must be proven as trustworthy in our own minds. Faith being worked out into reality must experience times of unbroken isolation. Never confuse the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life, because a great deal of what we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. Faith, as the Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts Him— a faith that says, “I will remain true to God’s character whatever He may do.” The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is— “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).

Reflections on being foreign Part I

So, I am a foreigner right now. (I don't think this is news to anyone who is reading this.) This makes me read Bible passages about "the foreigner" in a WHOLE new light.

Check out this one: "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and foreigner. I am the LORD your God." -Leviticus 19:9-10

And: "'When foreigners reside among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigners residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." -Leviticus 19:33-34

Firstly, when I saw "poor and foreigner" grouped together, I instantly understood why. In your native setting, you might be intelligent, educated, and pretty good at handling basic transactions, but when you are in a foreign context (especially in a foreign language!) you basically come across as mentally disabled. I am not saying this lightly, or to make a cheap joke. There are multiple people I know, even friends, who literally seem to me to be slightly... developmentally challenged, because of the way they speak English. I may never know this side of heaven whether they are actually slow or not but the fact remains that when you can't speak a language well, that is the impression you give off.

"Poor" implies disadvantaged, in need of a little extra grace, lacking. "Foreigner," I am learning firsthand, is the same. As for the second Scripture passage, I would like to take this opportunity to say I could never have expected a better reception from the people here. People are always inviting me to do things, and feeding me, and giving me things and offering to drive me places, and actually driving me places and then home again, even though where I live is on no one's way anywhere. I realize full well that right now I have nothing to give back to them. All I can offer them is my sincere gratitude. In the future, I hope I can also offer them friendship, but friendship takes time to flower, of course, and now the best I can give is a stranger's kindness.

It's not like I haven't spent time alone, but I want to be very clear about something: I am a person who loves being in her room. Sometimes I don't want to leave it, even to do something better than test-drive free music from Noisetrade while playing Spider Solitaire to stave off the boredom. If I am getting out and about all the time (and, I am), it's because people are initiating with me. It makes me see my need; the point of this paragraph is that I would be "lost" (too harsh a word, I know) without the intentional generosity of others calling or texting me, then driving here to pick me up. And frankly, I am pretty sure this is also because I am foreign. In America, I know there are some settings I'd be completely at ease in. One is at a Target. Another is at a Starbucks. Guess what, Saint Claude doesn't have either one of those. Those are just two examples, but here I'm pretty sure there are no settings at all here that I'd be "completely at ease in" (in which I'd be completely at ease...). We foreigners need help, is my point. We need people to leave grapes and gleanings lying around so we can eat while we're trying to track down the phone number to get our fridge fixed and figure out a grocery shopping schedule and transportation options.

Being a foreigner and "dropping" from being a person who is quickly easily understood almost all the time (gosh I hope so) to being someone who stumbles over the simplest things and uses the wrong gender with nouns, and talks in a weirdly formal way that might be textbook right but doesn't resemble how most people actually talk, makes me think of the options we all have in life. There are some people who will never do what I did, in moving to a foreign country alone, and as a result they may never quite realize how great it is to be understood when you open your mouth. I wouldn't blame anyone for staying in their home settings. It's no fun to feel like everything you say is dumb, and you have a thick accent.

But on some days, I have this thought, and admittedly its prideful, but it's like: "Do you realize who I am? I promise I'm not some babbling stupid person. I have friends, and stuff. I know how to buy things, and to say and understand numbers, even long ones, and communicate effectively with a telephone. And from time to time I am even clever with words, just not in your language." I've always associated a willingness to "drop in status" with the Christian life. By no means am I trying to say I did that on purpose, or that it's good I did it. Not at all, I just see a metaphor here I can't resist.

Jesus was the ultimate example of "Don't you know who I am? Don't you know what I'm capable of?" His Father would have sent Him more than 12 legions of angels at the drop of a hat (and apparently a legion was like 6,000), but instead He opted to live like us, you know, giving up certain perks of being a deity for a time so that He could show true love. Because love would never pull rank. Love wouldn't feel like it needed to say, "Seriously, I'm not as dumb as you probably think right now. Seriously, I'm way more powerful than this, you've got to believe me. If I wanted to I could call my dad, he's pretty famous and rich, no big deal, and he would fix everything, I swear."

Thus, I will conclude by saying that even though I feel dumb sometimes, I'm grateful for this opportunity. I love the idea of hospitality, and I've always wanted to be good at it, and I am learning tons from being on the receiving end in such an extreme way.

Praise and glory to God for His kind children, and His generous heart that humans share as His image-bearers even when they don't know Him.